We moved on to the next part of our brief to propose a pilot project to be carried out in 10 schools where thinking skills would be introduced.


After that it was about making every school in Malaysia a thinking school. That was scary as there are 10,000 of them. But that was what was agreed and we would work with the Malaysian


Government to transform all the schools. The scale of the project, named i-THINK, was and continues to be enormous.


VOLUME 2


In Malaysia things happen in a hurry. The i-THINK project was agreed in September last year and in October, a Malaysian team


came to UK to look at some of the schools in the Thinking Schools network.


Then in November our team spent a total of four weeks in Malaysia, training teachers from the 10 pilot schools, working with the headmasters. We introduced the concept of a thinking school and the resulting transformational


change, introducing some thinking tools and strategies, in particular Thinking Maps and finally, using a range of collaborative learning


strategies that the teachers could transfer into their classrooms.


We returned for the launch of i-THINK by none other than Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Najib Tun


Razak. At the launch there were pupils from each pilot school who gave the Prime Minister a presentation of some of the


outcomes of their thinking in the classroom and in so doing sold the notion of i-THINK superbly.


We then worked with the teachers from the pilot schools for a further week and got their take on the pilot activity. Bearing in mind that the pilot project was only 12


weeks old, the outcomes were extremely positive with both


teachers and principals reporting that:


• Classrooms were noisier but was positive “learning noise” where the pupils were actively involved in constructing their own learning;


• The teachers were asking fewer questions and the pupils were asking more - both of the teacher and of each other;


• Pupils’ understanding of lesson content has deepened; and


• Pupils were using the thinking tools with increasing fluency and competence and were enjoying their learning more


Of course there are still many challenges to meet, often the same sort of challenges that face schools in the UK Thinking Schools network in the early stages of their journeys aligning the workforce


to ensure maximum buy-in to the concept of incorporating thinking at the heart of the curriculum.


So 10 schools on board in Malaysia and only 9,990 to go and we are getting ready for the start of the next chapter.


November 2012 9


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18